It might not be a crime, but shh! Lawyers still don't like to mention adultery

Anyone for a spot of adultery? No? Thought not. Not that I was offering on my own account, of course, but rather summarising the sentiment expressed by professional mistress Karen Marley.

From a lawyer’s perspective, adultery is rather an odd thing. No longer a crime, at least in this jurisdiction (though there is an argument that doing so with certain members of the royal family may still be), it is still one of those wrongs which everyone tries to avoid mentioning. Don’t mention the ‘A’ word!

Professional mistress Karen Marley only has affairs with married men, but she would hate them to leave their wives, she says

For starters, it is one of only five grounds on which you can prove that you, as the wronged party, are entitled to a divorce. One of the other grounds is that your husband or wife has behaved in such a way that you cannot reasonably be expected to stay married to them – shortened to the ‘unreasonable behaviour’ ground.

In the eyes of most people, you can’t get behaviour that is much more unreasonable than committing adultery. Those who don’t want to admit to being cuckolded can therefore obtain a divorce without ever having to mention that ‘A’ word.

This is all very different from forty years ago, when an allegation of adultery required actual proof of it. Often the only way of doing this was to have the errant partner followed by a private detective to a hotel, at which point the detective would attempt to obtain photographic evidence of them sharing a room with someone they were not married to.

Occasionally, this resulted in farcical situations, with the whole thing being set up by prior arrangement, the spouse and their lover giggling behind the closed bedroom door whilst the detective photographed their shoes left neatly outside it. The late cricket commentator, Brian Johnston, recounted just such an episode in his autobiography.

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Of course, the fact that life is easier for someone to prove adultery doesn’t make it alright to commit adultery. Ms Marley is treading something of a dangerous path.

Having admitted that she is a serial adulteress, she risks the wrath of – on her own admission – at least 20 wounded wives. Divorces are no less expensive than any other court proceedings and Ms Marley could well find herself landed with applications for her to pay the costs of any divorces which she finds herself a co-respondent to.

I hope that she has about £20,000 to spare – assuming, of course, that those 20 wives dare to mention the ‘A’ word.

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RICHARD O'HAGAN: It might not be a crime, but shh! Lawyers still don't like to mention adultery